British Dialects Book

[Wendalyn Nichols]

Poifickt! There's an entire PADS--Number 80, 1998--devoted to American
English and the IPA that's well worth checking out.

At 09:16 PM 9/20/02 -0400, Mark A Mandel wrote:
>On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>
>#>I don't understand what a phonemic (since it is a mental
>#>representation) pronunciation is. Nobody ever pronounced a phoneme.
>
>Let's try an example, made up a-purpose:
>
>         sought. vb: past tense and perfect participle of "seek".
>         /s O t/
>
>where the phonemic symbol /O/ is defined as the vowel of "caught",
>*whatever that is phonetically for you*. If you merge it with /a/ as
>[a], you'll say [sat]. If you merge it with /a/ as [O], or don't merge
>it, you'll say [sOt]. In any case, your pronunciation will be the
>correct one for whatever dialect you speak.
>
>Howzat?
>
>-- Mark M.